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The Civil Wars

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MUSIC duo The Civil Wars have had quite a year - not only did they win two Grammys at the 2012 ceremony in February (for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best Folk Album), but they also supported Vogue cover girl Adele on her last tour, with the singer herself describing the pair as the "best live band I have ever seen".

"Our music can be quite sparse and quiet, so to play in front of a huge audience was really incredible," said one half of the duo, Joy Williams. " Adele was really supportive of us right from the beginning. It was so good to be able to stand stage-side and watch her perform every night, then becoming friends with her was really the icing on the cake. She's brilliant company."

The band, made of friends Joy Williams and John Paul White, have a blue-cum-folk-cum-Americana-infused sound that's difficult to slot into one genre - even the Grammys had to honour them with an award that celebrated their work both as a country duo and as group performers.

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"What we do is kind of a sonic stew of where we're both from and our different experiences," said Williams. "When we're writing the only thing we really consider is, 'do we love it? Do we want to sing and perform it every night?' We pull different parts out of each other to, hopefully, make something unique."

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As Williams says, the pair couldn't have come from more different backgrounds. Williams grew up in California, to the sounds of The Beach Boys and The Carpenters and began her music career singing in church. White was born in Alabama and spent his childhood on a rural farm - with no music to speak of. He decided on music after he realised that "on a very superficial level, it made girls like me".

"I later found out more about my voice and a deeper musical root, but that at that time it was all about the girls," he laughed.

They both met as "burnt-out solo artists" at a song-writing session for an emerging band that didn't even have a name.

"It wasn't the most motivating of experiences," recalled Williams, "but I remember being paired with John Paul and we started singing and harmonising together. What was unique was the blend of sounds - like this strange family blend."

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This month, the band have released their debut album - Barton Hollow - to critical acclaim and kicked off their first UK tour, which includes stops at Birmingham, Brighton, London, Manchester and Leeds. Their success, White says, was still very much a happy accident.

"We weren't even sure we were going to carry on," added White. "I was pretty worried about more rejection. The solo stuff hadn't worked out and there was a bit of heel-scuffling, but we did have the wherewithal to think, 'let's do this again'. It was fun though, so we wrote some songs and went and did an open mic-night and told no one. I guess it all got a little bit out of hand."